…walked off with the aggressor

“For the vast majority of white Americans, the past decade*—the first phase—had been a struggle to treat the Negro with a degree of decency, not equality. White America was ready to demand that the Negro should be spared the lash of brutality and coarse degradation, but it had never been truly committed to helping him out of poverty, exploitation or all forms of discrimination. The outraged white citizen had been sincere when he snatched the whips from the Southern sheriffs…[But] White Americans left the Negro on the ground and in devastating numbers walked off with the aggressor. It appeared that the white segregationist and the ordinary white citizen had more in common with one another than either had with the Negro.”

*i.e. 1950s-early60s
– MLK, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (NY: Harper and Row, 1967)